


The Aftermath

by alannasaurus



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Aftermath, Battle of Hogwarts, Other, PTSD, Rebuilding, Recovery
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-01-07
Updated: 2015-01-07
Packaged: 2018-03-06 12:29:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,059
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3134516
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alannasaurus/pseuds/alannasaurus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the Battle of Hogwarts, the wizarding community must struggle to pull itself back together, starting with the once great Hogwarts.  With the surviving staff and students traumatized, they must lean on each other to heal, and press on.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Aftermath

Three days after the Battle of Hogwarts, Hermione wandered restless around the dark, decimated halls. She let her mind wander as she picked her way through the rubble.  
So much of the castle had been destroyed, and there had been so many casualties, it would be a long time until the wizarding community would be able to move on from this one.  
As she moved quietly through the ghostly corridors she spotted many young students curled up in corners, huddled in blankets with their friends, crying, always crying. Hermione didn’t quite remember when her own tears had stopped flowing, though she strongly suspected it was from dehydration than from lack of reason to cry. After all, there were more than enough reasons to choose from. The remnants of the Order had tried to provide transportation to all of the students wishing to go home to their families, and some of them took it, but most of them wished to share their sorrows with their fellow students.  
Hermione thought of her own parents, somewhere in Australia, totally oblivious to the fact that they even had a daughter, let alone that she had just fought a battle, had lost friends. She resolved that she would give them a few weeks peace before restoring their memory, maybe by then she would her world in a bit more order.   
She turned a slightly singed corner and found herself at the Great Hall. Even now, in the dead of night, she could see Madame Pomfrey and her helpers busy at work, trying to heal the wounded. Many of the wounded had been hit with multiple curses, and everywhere she turned, Hermione could see someone groaning in pain, some colored in unnatural shades, or with strange growths poking out of their bodies.  
Nearly everyone had worked their share in this makeshift Hospital Wing, and indeed Hermione saw Luna and Neville working side by side with Madame Pomfrey trying to reverse a mixture of curses cast on some poor Slytherin first year that had snuck into the fight.  
Hermione turned around and walked away as silently as she could. She knew she should probably help, but she didn’t think she could handle it, not with all that was on her mind.  
No. She needed to focus on what it would take to get this school up and running again. The castle was virtually destroyed, and with the amount of curses that had been cast, reparo simply won’t be enough, Hogwarts will have to be rebuilt the muggle way, by hand. That would take some time, and wizards don’t like doing anything by hand, but that was the least of her worries, the real problem would be finding enough people willing to teach. All of the teachers were either dead or grievously injured, and everyone in the wizarding community was so spooked by the recent events that teaching at Hogwarts was considered a cursed job. She couldn’t blame them, but it certainly caused a significant problem if education at Hogwarts was to continue.   
Then there was the issue of psychological damage. She remembered reading about Post-Traumatic Stress, and the things it could do to people. She imagined that once the shock left her system, she herself would begin to suffer from it too, already she relived parts of the battle in flashes whenever she passed certain parts of the castle. She could only imagine, those who had been in the central of the fight, reliving their best friends deaths, over and over. It would only be made worse by the fact that many of the student that had died had stayed on as ghosts, and would roam these halls forever.   
Somehow she found herself back at the entrance to the Gryffindor Common Room. The Fat Lady swung open without prompt after seeing her, there were no passwords to the common rooms anymore, everyone needed each other for support, and after all, Houses didn’t really matter anymore anyway, at least not for now.  
Though the rest of the castle was in shambles, the Gryffindor Common Room looked strangely untouched. She imagined that none of the terrible things that had happened three days ago had occurred, that any second now, Fred and George would coming bursting through the portrait hole, arm in arm, singing some obnoxious tune. But as the clock ticked on, the portrait hole remained tragically closed, and painfully reality set in again.   
She climbed up to the girl’s dormitory as quietly as she could. She had considered going up to the boy’s dormitory to wake up Ron and find some comfort in him before she remembered that he had gone back to the Burrow with his family to mourn. She couldn’t blame him. He had promised to hurry back to help with the reconstruction of the castle, but she had told him not to worry about it. She wished she hadn’t, she missed him, and with everything going on, she could use the comfort he always brought.   
There were many girls from other houses sleeping in there, along with a few alumni who had come back to fight, but Hermione’s bed was mercifully empty. She climbed into bed and drew the curtains closed, sealing herself in a cavern of heavy blankets. She silently created a small ball of light that hovered slightly above and in front of her. She curled up under the covers and pulled the book from under her pillow. It was the only muggle book she had brought with her to Hogwarts, a compendium of the C. S. Lewis books, The Chronicles of Narnia. She remembered being a little girl, dreaming of living in a world of magic, before her own magic had begun to manifest. She would hide in this magical world whenever the kids at school would make fun of her for her bushy hair and call her a know it all. Imagine her wonder when she learned not only that magic was real, but that she was part of it! This book was one of the few things from home that she had allowed herself to bring with her for comfort when she first came to Hogwarts. She searched for that comfort again now, yearning to drown her sorrows in fiction. It wasn’t long before she drifted off to sleep, curled beneath the heavy blankets, still clutching the worn book.


End file.
